Face (ours) yellow

Titled with the parenthetical "ours" and the color descriptor "yellow," this woodblock print suggests a collective face, a shared human visage rendered in warm tones. The word "ours" shifts the face from a private, individual subject to something communal, implying that this is a face that belongs to everyone or that represents a group rather than a person. Kinoshita Tomio's use of yellow as the dominant color gives the face a luminous, almost solar quality, associating it with light, warmth, and visibility. Yellow is also the color of skin in many cultural representations, and using it as a defining modifier may reference racial or ethnic identity in a way that the artist's other, uncolored face studies do not. The woodblock medium renders yellow with particular vibrancy when printed on white [washi](/glossary/washi) paper, the pigment maintaining its intensity without the muddying that can occur with overprinting.